The PopCult Toybox

Last week, World of EPI (Entertainment, Publishing and Inspiration), the leading multicultural toy manufacturer, announced a collaboration with Disney Consumer Products, Games and Publishing to create fashion dolls, collectible figurines and accessories for the new Disney+ series The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder and the upcoming Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur series on Disney Channel. These will be the first toys based on either cartoon property.

This is also, I believe, the first time that World of EPI has entered into a licensing arrangement, and it’s a real coup for this toy company that specializes in ethnically diverse dolls, plush and collectibles. These are the folks who make Fresh Dolls and The Fresh Squad, and I’ve been a fan for a long time.  I wrote about World of EPI and it’s founder, Dr. Lisa Williams, late last year, and this is a pretty huge deal for them. I’m sure that, had the International Toy Fair in New York happened this year, this would have been one of the high-profile announcments.

World of EPI will create a series of 10” fashion dolls with rooted hair, collectible figurines, poseable plush, role play accessories and more based on the ethnically diverse characters of The Proud Family and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Each doll and figurine will exemplify the distinct characteristics of each character, and celebrate diversity, self-love and empowerment.

“It speaks volumes that Disney has collaborated with us on these high-profile projects,” said Dr. Lisa Williams, founder of World of EPI. “Our mission is to create dolls so children of all ethnicities and colors can grow up seeing a true representation of their beauty. What a dream to create licensed dolls and toys for these powerhouses Disney and Marvel properties. Together we’re changing how Black and brown children everywhere embrace their own beauty and build their confidence.”

The World of EPI is committed to authentic representation to help children see their true beauty and brilliance. The company creates unique sculpts that are true pieces of art, created to empower all kids.  The characters have beautiful full lips, custom-blended skin tones and more representative articulated bodies. The collections feature hair textures and styles ranging from afro, afro puffs, wavy, braids and straight. Everything is mindfully and intentionally done to represent the beauty in multicultural children.

The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, the highly-anticipated revival of the groundbreaking Disney Channel series, The Proud Family, is set to debut February 23 on Disney+. The upcoming series will pick up the story of its central character, Penny Proud, and include her madcap family: parents Oscar and Trudy, twin siblings BeBe and CeCe, and grandmother Suga Mama (and Puff!). Cast members reprising their roles are: Kyla Pratt as Penny Proud, Tommy Davidson as Oscar Proud, Paula Jai Parker as Trudy Proud, JoMarie Payton as Suga Mama and Cedric the Entertainer as Uncle Bobby. From Disney Television Animation, the series is executive-produced by Bruce W. Smith and Ralph Farquhar, both of whom led the original series.

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, based on Marvel’s hit comic books, follows the adventures of 13-year-old super-genius Lunella Lafayette (voiced by Diamond White) and her 10-ton T-Rex, Devil Dinosaur (voiced by Fred Tatasciore). After Lunella accidentally brings Devil Dinosaur into present-day New York City via a time vortex, the duo works together to protect the city’s Lower East Side from danger. From Disney Television Animation, the series is executive produced by Laurence Fishburne and Helen Sugland’s Cinema Gypsy Productions and Emmy Award-winner Steve Loter. Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur premieres Summer 2022 on Disney Channel. This is a real treat for comic fans because Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is an updated revival of concepts created by Jack Kirby over forty years ago.

In addition to Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, more Marvel products are in development from World of EPI. We will keep you posted on what those are as soon as possible.

Once again we have come to Tuesday on The AIR  and for the first time in a few weeks we deliver unto you a one-third-new, three-hour  episode of Radio Free Charleston.  You simply have to poke your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column (If you’re reading PopCult on a desktop, that is. Phone readers have to go to the website).

We have yet another  hybrid edition of Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This week we open with a full hour of local, independent and new music, which you can find your way to purchase by following the links in the playlist below.  The show begins with Ann Magnuson’s cover of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” and then we have new tracks from three Chicago indie bands (one by way of North Carolina now), Kerosene Stars, Walcot and Cosmic Bull. The rest of hour one is filled with crunchy musical lovliness, both local and not.

Our second and third hours are comprised of an episode of Radio Free Charleston International from early 2017. Five years back I was really taking the whole “free format radio” thing seriously and delivered a head-scratching two hours of excellent music which flows together better than it has any right to.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…

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hour one
Ann Magnuson “Moonage Daydream”
Kerosene Stars “Purpose Of a Friend”
Walcot “Another Man”
Cosmic Bull “Joe Namath Moment”
Mother Nang “Buy The Farm”
Cassius At Best “Alabaster”
Byzantine “My New Casket”
The Bob Thompson Band “Hot Shot”
Drawing Hands “Wake Up”
Hello June “Wish I Could Fly”
The New Relics “Say It Like You Mean It”
Paul Calicoat “Cold Dead Hands”
Shaky Graves featuring Sierra Ferrell “Ready Or Not”
Eddie Vedder “Invincible”

“A Jarring Clash Of Musical Styles”
hour two
Ennio Morricone “Frantic”
The Aquabats “Love Without Anger”
The Vandals “The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprise”
Voodoo Glow Skulls “Time Out For Fun”
Don Knotts Overdrive “Snowball”
Peter Gabriel “Das Fishermelz”
Plymouth Fury “Maribor”
Ray Davies “The Getaway (Lonesome Train)”
Luciferian Light Orchestra “Thunder Perfect Mind”
David Bowie “Killing A Little Time”
All Them Witches “Cowboy Kirk”

hour three
Babymetal “The One”
Foxygen “Mrs. Adams”
The Murlocs “Wolf Creep”
Skytown Riot “Devil’s Masquerade”
Diablo Swing Orchestra “Voodoo Mon Amour”
No Resolve “Love Me To Death”
Jordan Max “Hell”
Symbolic “Chameleon”
Go Get Gone “Chasin’ My Baby”
DEVO “Soo Bawlz”
Keith Emerson Band “Marche Train”
The Who “Pure and Easy”
The Rutles “Piggy in the Middle”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and Ska Madness at 2 PM. At 3 PM we have two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.

This week our art is a bit of an abstract, imaginary cityscape, composed using lessons that I learned from imitating Edward Hopper for a month, but veering completely away from his style of rendering and level of detail. I’m sure he’d be appalled by it.

This was an attempt at using acrylics on paper for pens. It’s a study for a potential larger work, but I don’t know if I like it enough to transfer it to canvas. At least not without major changes.

If you want to see this one a bit bigger, just click on it.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you love-themed editions of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

Nigel Pye dipped into his archives for Valentine’s Day collection  of amazing psychedelic rock, expanding your minds and your hearts.

Check out the playlist for all the peace and love…

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Frijid Pink “I Want To Be Your Lover”
Jimi Hendrix “The Power To Love”
Tears For Fears “Sowing The Seeds Of Love”
Janis Joplin “To Love Somebody”
Ramatan “I Can Only Love You”
Aphrodite’s Child “Let Me Love , Let Me Live”
Iron Butterfly “It Must Be Love”
Uriah Heep “Love Machine”
Strawberry Alarm Clock “Strawberries Mean Love”
The Rutles “Love Life”
The Turtles “Love Minus Zero”
Badfinger “Love Is Gonna Come At Last”

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.

Following that hour of Psychedelic candy, Herman Linte’s Prognosis will bring us two hours of romantic progressive rock, Assembled, relunctantly I might add, by Herman as a Valentine’s Day mixtape.

Check out the playlist…

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ELP “Still You Turn Me On”
King Crimson “Heartbeat”
Kate Bush “L’amour Looks Something Like You”
Different Light “In Love And War”
Kevin Gilbert “Fall In Love With Me”
ASIA “Love Under Fire”
Gary Moore “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know”
YES “Real Love”
Big Big Train “All The Love We Can Give”
Queen “Somebody To Love (live)”
Peter Gabriel “Love To Be Loved”
FM “Love Is The Law”
Neal Morse “Come Let Him Love You”
Frank Zappa “Bamboozled By Love”
Genesis “Let Us Now Make Love”
Ajalon “What Kind Of Love”
Klaatu “The Love Of A Woman”
Steve Hackett “Love Song To A Vampire”
John Wetton & Robby Kreiger “All You Need Is Love”

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

At 8 PM, as promised, we bring you an overnight marathon of MIRRORBALL, kicking off with four hours of love-themed Disco hits, courtesy of Mel Larch, your PopCulteer’s own personal Valentine.

The American Dream Mall, in New Jersey, just a few miles from New York City, is now open and it is the second-largest shopping mall in the United States.  Having mutated many times since it’s original conception, the mall is now 70% Entertainment and 30% retail. Within this mall you will find a Nickelodeon Universe theme park, a Dreamworks Animation water park, and an indoor year-round skiing faclility.

There’s a ridiculous amount of stuff here, a Legoland, an aqaurium, a bowling alley, a multiplex cinema, an ice-skating rink, over 100 places to eat and 450 retail stores.

The video above is just over an hour, and it’s popular YouTuber, Action Kid, just walking through the mall showing what he can find on his first trip there, while providing an amusing running commentary. He just shot this in late January, so it’s very current.

Normally, this is not the sort of thing I’d post here in PopCult unless I shot the video myself but there is something besides the excessive consumerism that is particularly delightful about The American Dream Mall. The walls are covered with a  wide variety of surrealist, geometric and abstract art. We’re talking about murals that are maybe 20 feet high and 80 feet long in places. There’s even a bizarre topiary garden in one area of the mall, with sculpted plants residing in planters that look like human heads with multiple features and giant disembodied hands. Another area has a secret garden filled with strange gnomes and mushrooms. This mall may well be the largest installation of surreal art in the world.

Seriously, I don’t advocate drug use, but if there was ever a place to go when you’ve dropped acid, this is it.

Action Kid’s video shows off a lot of this stuff as he’s walking around, and it’s a real kick.  Mrs. PopCulteer and I are seriously considering a trip to this place later this year. Aside from all the cool SpongeBob stuff, there’s a brand-new two-story Toys R Us and a three-story It’s Sugar there.

Next up in our chronologicalish trip through the history of Radio Free Charleston is one of our most celebrated episodes, our Halloween 2009 show. This one is loaded with music from The Big Bad, Flare Baroshi, CYAC and more, and has a storyline and skits provided by members of The No Pants Players, Mark Wolfe, Amy Williams and Mel Larch.

You can find the original production notes HERE, and enjoy Halloween in February! Consider it a gift to those folks who just aren’t into Valentine’s Day.

The PopCulteer
February 11, 2022

Friday On The AIR

Friday afternoon, just like last year, we offer up some special Valentine’s-themed episodes of our music specialty shows, including a bonus edition of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, another brand-new episode in the show’s regular timeslot at 2 PM and an encore of last year’s love-themed edition of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat at 3 PM.

If you want to hear the super-sweet Valentine’s ear candy  yourself, you simply have to move your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column.

At 1 PM, Mel Larch unleashes the first of two arrows through your Disco heart with Friday’s double-shot of MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music brings you two romance-soaked hours of primo mushy-lovey Disco tunes, and the first one is like a heart-shaped box of chocolates, filled with great beats that you can dance to.

Check out the playlist…

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Ultimate “Touch Me Baby/ Love Is The Ultimate”
The Spinners “One Of A Kind Love Affair”
Donna Summer “I Feel Love”
The Salsoul Orchestra “Love Letters”
The Undisputed Truth “You + Me = Love”
Roy Ayers “Don’t Let Our Love Slip Away”
Goody Goody “It Looks Like Love”
KC & the Sunshine Band “Hooked On Your Love”
Barry White “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love”

Then at 2 PM, Mel is back with another hour of love-themed Disco classics, to get you in the mood for a pre- Valentine’s Day weekend-long lovefest. This show is loaded with  romantic classics. Just look…

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Love & Kisses “I Found Love”
Roy Ayers “Don’t Hide Your Love”
Frankie Knuckles featuring Adeva “Love Can Change It”
Earth Wind & Fire “Love’s Dance”
Donna Summer “Love To Love You Baby”
D Train “You’re The One For Me”
Gloria Scott “Just As Long As We’re Together”
Chic “My Forbidden Lover”
Carol Williams “Love Is You”
Alec R. Constadinos “Romeo and Juliet”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM (with a bonus show at 1 PM this week), with replays this Saturday at  9 PM (kicking off a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM  exclusively on The AIR. And Friday night this week, you’ll get a special marathon that combines this year’s double-shot of Valentine’s shows, with last year’s, giving you four hours of romantic Disco to get you in the groove and in the mood. That begins at 8 PM, and then at Midnight you can stick around for more of the marathon as The AIR becomes an all-night Disco!

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a love-themed episode of her own last year, as Sydney’s Big Electric Cat delivered a Valentine to us from the lockdown in the UK. This year we decided to replay this gem of an episode, filled with New Wave at it’s most infatuated.

Check out this playlist:

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Thompson Twins “Love On Your Side”
Joy Division “Love Will Tears Us Apart Again”
Heaven 17 “I’m Gonna Make You Fall In Love With Me”
Klaus Nomi “Falling In Love Again”
XTC “Love At First Sight”
Transvision Vamp “I Don’t Want Your Money (I Want Your Love)”
A Flock of Seagulls “The More You Live, The More You Love”
The Buzzcocks “Ever Fallen In Love”
Julian Cope “Beautiful Love (Live)”
Kate Bush “Hounds Of Love”
Donny Iris “Love Is Like A Rock”
Psychedelic Furs “Love My Way”
Howard Jones “What Is Love”
ABC “Look Of Love”
New Order “Bizarre Love Triangle”
Soft Cell “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go”
Missing Persons “Hello I Love You”
DEVO “Ton O’ Luv”
Lene Lovich “What Will I Do Without You”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Power of Love”
New Musik “All You Need Is Love”
Depeche Mode “Love, In Itself”
Eurythmics “Love Is A Stranger”
Ian Dury and the Blockheads “Wake Up Make Love With Me”
Mike Batt “Love Makes You Crazy”
Oingo Boingo “Wild Sex (In The Working Class)”
Pretenders “Lovers Of Today”
Elvis Costello “Mystery Dance”
Art of Noise “Moments In Love”

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. You can also hear select episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat as part of the overnight Haversham Recording Institute marathon that starts every Monday at 11 PM.

And that is it for this week’s PopCulteer.  Check back for fresh content every day and all our way-cool regular features.

Despite the dark cloud hanging over the United States Postal Service for the last few years, they have managed to release several cool and highly-collectible stamp sets recently.

Stamp collecting is nowhere near being the mainstream hobby that it was decades ago, but it is still a thing, even in today’s world, where many people go months or years without buying a first-class stamp.

However, that hasn’t stopped the USPS from releasing cool new sets that pay tribute to the greats of literature and philosophy, such as August Wilson, Ursela K. Leguin and Yogi Berra, as well as really neat cultural touchstones, like this multi-design set devoted to Tap Dance…

Of major interest for Pop Culturists is this set, just released a few months ago, devoted to Star Wars Droids, with ten different designs…

The most recent release celebrates the Lunar New Year and The Year of the Tiger, which is near and dear to your PopCulteer…

You can order the latest quarterly USA Philatelic catalog for free HERE, and read more about the sets listed above, as well as first-day covers and special albums and framed editions, plus you can find out about upcoming sets like the Title IX stamps, due out in March, and order previous stamps that they still have in stock, like their Scooby Doo, Hot Wheels and Marvin Gaye stamps and collectibles.

We may not NEED stamps as much as we used to, but it’s still okay to want them.

We have a cool new Kickstarter Project from Robert Jiminez to tell you about today. Last summer I told you about his latest Fearsome Weirdos trading card set, and now he’s taking his monstrous talents into the world of sports with Startling Lineup Trading Cards.

Startling Lineup is a 36 card baseball player parody set written and illustrated by Jiménez. A companion set of sorts to the Fearsome Weirdos sets, it features 24 bizarre ball players along with a collection of MVPs, Most Vile Products. Card backs feature conceptual sketches of the design on the front, and these will be printed on old-school cards, not that fancy bright-white stuff that lacks the charm of vintage cards.

Included with each set is a wrapper card with checklist, a sticker and two different authentic, unfolded wax wrappers!

Robert’s work has appeared on album covers, in publications such as THE THING: ARTBOOK, VISIONS FROM THE UPSIDE DOWN: STRANGER THINGS ARTBOOK, Tiki Magazine and Pinstriping & Kustom Graphics Magazine, and has shown in galleries including Disneyland’s Wonderground, Harold Golen, M Modern, Creature Features, and Bear & Bird among others.

You can also see Robert’s work in trading card sets for Topps, Cryptozoic, and Upper Deck on licenses such as Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages, Mars Attacks, Star Wars, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Rick And Morty, Ghostbusters, Adventure Time and more. Most notably, Robert worked on 8 paintings for the Upper Deck trading card set FIREFLY THE ‘VERSE and 9 paintings for WACKY PACKAGES GO TO THE MOVIES by Topps.

Robert is also the author and illustrator of the books LAST CALL AT TIKILANDIA, STRANGEWISE NO.9, CHIMPS & TIKIS AND RAVEN-HAIRED BEAUTIES: AN ADULT COLORING BOOK, NOSFERATU’S CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK and WEIRD-ASS FACES VOL.1, SOPHISTICATES AND WEIRDOS and the trading card set FEARSOME WEIRDOS.

With Startling Lineup, Backers will be able to add-on some original art along with extra wrappers and previous Zerostreet trading card sets.

Also, sketch cards are available as an add-on! And as with the original Fearsome Weirdos set, Jiminez invited a few guest artist friends to help create a very limited amount of them. Only a handful from each guest, these sketch cards will be randomly placed in orders.

The basic set is $35 plus shipping, and the campaign has already met its funding goal in just its first few hours. In fact, your PopCulteer kicked in yesterday and when I was done, I realized that my pledge was the one that happened to hit the goal. If you kick in now, you are guaranteed to get this cool trading card set.

Startling Lineup is a great set for fans of baseball (which might be facing a strike this year) and the macabre (which never goes on strike), and especially for folks who like both. You can find the Kickstarter campaign HERE, and check out the video below…

Once again we have come to Tuesday on The AIR  but our boilerplate is a bit different this week. Today we deliver unto you a brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston, and a brand-new edition of The Swing Shift but as a bonus we have a special treat as Dexter Checkers, the host of Ska Madness, who stepped down a few years back for health reasons, returns again for a special episode of his show that brings you a mixtape of a classic Two-Tone Ska band and their related atts.

So that’s five hours of particularly nifty and new internet radio!  You simply have to take your cursor over and point it at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column (If you’re reading PopCult on a desktop, that is. Phone readers have to go to the website).

We have a  wild and eclectic new Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.  This week we open with a new song by The Paranoid Style, a band that includes WV’s own, William Matheny,  and we pay tribute to the late George Crumb, with some selections from his vast ouvre.

In our second hour we’ll bring you The Kronos Quartet, and their rendition of Crumb’s work, The Black Angels. The rest of our three-hour show is jam-packed with new music from Jim Lange, Minor Swing, Byzantine, Korn, Nomadic Narwhal, Paul Calicoat, Jethro Tull, Billy Bragg and more.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages)…

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hour one
The Paranoid Style “Barney Bubbles”
George Crumb “Dances of The Ancient Earth” from Ancient Voices of Children
Jim Lange “Everything’s Alright”
Nomadic Narwhal “Arrival”
The Bob Thompson Band “Fly High”
Minor Swing “Ma Premiere Guitare”
Drawing Hands “Jetsons”
Byzantine “Stick Figure”
Spitboy “Moral Casualty”
Cassius At Best “Hornets”
Korn “Start The Healing”
Disarm The Fallen “Cold Dead Night”
Dream Theater “The Farandole”
John Cale/Lou Reed “Forever Changed”

hour two
Hello June “Fight, Don’t Fight”
Paul Calicoat “Clown Face”
Jethro Tull “Mine Is The Mountain”
The Anchoress “My Confessor”
Jordan Andrew Jefferson “I’m Still Here”
U2 “Your Song Saved My Life”
Diablo Blues Band ‘Hell To Pay”
Kronos Quartet “George Crumb’s Black Angels, I, II, and III”
Feast of Stephen “Gomec”
Liam Gallagher “Everything’s Electric”
The Jam “English Rose”
A Story Told “Fall Back”

hour three
J Marinelli “Worker and Parasite”
Skafish “Nothing I Can Do”
Hate Your Face “Vampire”
The Specials “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us Around”
Joseph Hale “Raw Emotion”
Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands “Earth Above My Roots”
The Dollyrots “Valentine’s Day”
Lady D “Somebody’s Gotta Move”
John The Conqueror “She Said”
Billy Bragg “The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here No More”
The New Relics “Different Kind of Crazy”
David Synn with Matthew Fitzwater “Lower”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for an encore of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and a special new Ska Madness at 2 PM.

Dexter Checkers returns with the first new episode of Ska Madness since last November at 2 PM. He has recovered nicely from his serious health issues and has returned to work at The Haversham Recording Institute. He’s been threatening to give us a new Ska Madness, and this week he was in the mood to give us a mixtape that combines music from The English Beat with tracks from their spin-off bands, General Public and Fine Young Cannibals, plus some solo material from Ranking Roger.

We didn’t get a playlist, but he promises that it’ll be a skankin’ show.

Ska Madness will be repeated this week Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 11 AM and late Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM we have a special new mixtape edition of The Swing Shift that brings you an hour of Western Swing. This show gives you classic Western Swing artists like Bob Wills and Sapde Cooley, and tosses in just a couple of modern bands playing tribute. We even get Ella Fitzgerald’s foray into the genre.

Western Swing is very important in the evolution of American pop music, and provided part of the musical DNA for what would become Rock and Roll. Just as you wouldn’t have Chuck Berry without Louis Jordan, you wouldn’t have Bill Haley without Bob Wills.  And without Chuck Berry and Bill Haley, we wouldn’t have Rock and Roll as we know it.

Best of all, Western Swing still swings!

Check out this playlist:

The Swing Shift 126

Brazos Valley Boys with Hank Thompson “Woodchopper’s Ball”
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys “San Antonio Rose”
Noel Boggs and His Day Sleepers “Stealin’ Home”
Curly Williams “Southern Belle”
Spade Cooley “Boggs Boogie”
Johnny Lee Wills “Milk Cow Blues”
The Light Crust Doughboys “Pussy, Pussy, Pussy”
Bob Wills “Sioux City Sue”
Dickie McBride “Tulsa Twist”
Fort Worth Doughboys “Sunbonnet Sue”
Leon Mcauliffe & His Western Swing Band “Panhandle Rag”
Ella Fitzgerald “Cow Cow Boogie”
Noel Boggs-Wade Ray “It’s All Your Fault”
Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers “When You’re Smiling”
Modern Mountaineers “Everybody’s Trucking”
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys “Across The Alley From Alamo”
Jesse Ashock “My Bank Account Is Gone”
National Radio Station “Hesitation Blues”
Arthur Smith “Fingers On Fire”
Kitty Rose and The Rattlers “Might As Well Be DEad”
Hank Penny and His Radio Cowboys “Won’t You Ride In My Little Red Wagon”
Al Petty “Al’s Steel Guitar”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesdays at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 8 PM and Saturday afternoon only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

After a month of paying tribute to Edward Hopper by dabbling in realism, this weekend I decided to cut loose with a little abstract expressionism.

What you see above is an acrylic on cheap-ass canvas board study for a possible larger work later. I wanted to evoke the feeling of stormclouds gathering over a suburban area, only without resorting to any photographic reference.

Which is not to suggest that Expressionism is simply laziness, but in this particular case, that did play a small part in it. This one didn’t take any less time than the Hopperesque pieces, though, so it wasn’t quite the shortcut I’d imagined. Also, this one may seem a little fuzzier here than it should because this is not a scan of the painting, but a photo taken with my phone and a five-dollar ring light. The paint was still too wet to put it in the scanner and I didn’t want to smear it with an acetate cover.

I may go back and work on this more. The light colors photographed much lighter than they look to the naked eye, but that made me have second thoughts about the color composition.

If you want to see this painting larger, just click on it.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

Our Monday Marathon, beginning at 8 PM, brings you eleven hours of one of our “on hiatus” Haversham Recording Institute shows, Ska Madness. Dexter Checkers is threatening to return to this show on a semi-regular basis, so we decided to drop a marathon here to encourage him.